The need to base policy on evidence has placed pressure on decision-makers to support proposals with well-grounded research and information. However, no practical guide with a focus on public sector policy and decision-making for doing this exists. This edited text fills the gap by providing a practical and comprehensive manual for people working in policy areas. It is aimed at practitioners with little or no experience in research and analysis but who require skills in managing, assessing and critically evaluating evidence use in the public sector.

The success and fate of governments around the globe is not only based on the success of political leaders, but also on the top civil servants who lead the apparatus of government. Given the enormous tasks of leading society and changing the culture of government itself, the training and retraining of top civil servants is vital. This important collection is a one-of-a-kind study that not only provides information about the where, what, and how of the training of top civil servants around the world, but also offers up-to-date cultural, political, economic background on both larger countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, and also smaller countries such as Colombia, Namibia, and Belgium. It explores in detail the factors that result in different country perceptions of the importance of executive training, and the reasons for the variations in its quality and robustness.